If you are Muslim, the Republican Party now wants to use the machinery of government to discriminate against those of your faith. If you are Mexican-American, the party has just embraced a man who has slandered your countrymen as rapists and criminals. And if you are in either group, Trump just declared you unfit to sit as a judge on any case that involves him. Because it is you who are biased, inevitably, thanks to your race or religion.

The damage to the Republican brand doesn't end with Muslims and Mexicans. Because many millions of Americans who pass this new test of ethnic and religious purity are appalled as well.

African-Americans are no doubt most alert to the wreckage this brand of thought leaves in its wake. But America is full of ethnic and religious groups that can remember when the finger was pointed at them. It is unnerving to hear Holocaust survivors say they hear an echo of fascism in the ranting of the new Republican standard-bearer.

It’s strange to see a Leftist publication complain about Trump’s alleged bigotry. Who is it that rejects individualism in favor of group identity? The Democrats. They’re obsessed with “diversity.” The rich diversity of individual ability, ambition, goals, values, moral character and courage that has enabled a free America to flourish? No. Diversity of race (or racial heritage). The racist “brand of thought” is embedded in the Democrat psyche. Strange indeed to see the Star-Ledger complain about anyone’s bigotry, given that it Trumpets the primacy of racial group identity that leads to bigotry.

Whatever racist sentiments real or imagined Trump may harbor, collectivist Leftists are the last people who have any standing to criticize anyone for that.

11 comments:

There are aspects of Trump's personality that I don't like and things I wish he said more carefully.

Take his comments on Mexicans for example. He didn't say all Mexicans are criminals, he just said, in effect, that we aren't getting the best Mexico has to offer, and who can disagree. Just look at the most wanted list from Los Angeles - it's almost entirely Hispanic.

And he's right about Muslims. Why does the USA benefit from a single Muslim? What have Muslims contributed to the world in the last 500 years? Check out the most wanted list from Hennepin County (Minneapolis) -- at least 2 of the 10 are Somalis.

I don't know what Trump's views on race are, but based on his immigration policies we would have a chance of maintaing the USA as a majority white country. When the left talks about race they don't believe in diversity. They are against White, heterosexual, and patriarchal society. They are willing to import millions of Muslims and don't care if white women are raped (look at Europe).

Contra the article you linked to by Schwartz, race does matter. Groups vary in innate intelligence, criminality and other factors. Yes there is free will, but it is constrained by biology.

Now you might disagree with me that group differences have a biological basis. Fine, but you have to admit if these differences aren't genetic they might as well be.

These circumlocutions translate simply into this: one’s race determines the content of one’s mind. They imply that people have worthwhile views to express because of their ethnicity, and that “diversity” enables us to encounter “black ideas,” “Hispanic ideas,” etc. What could be more repulsively racist than that? This is exactly the premise held by the South’s slave-owners and by the Nazis’ Storm Troopers. They too believed that an individual’s thoughts and actions are determined by his racial heritage.

Whether a given race receives special rewards or special punishments is immaterial. The core of racism is the notion that the individual is meaningless and that membership in the collective–the race–is the source of his identity and value. To the racist, the individual’s moral and intellectual character is the product, not of his own choices, but of the genes he shares with all others of his race. To the racist, the particular members of a given race are interchangeable.__

There may be some people who believe this, but not even the most hard core racists I've met would talk that way. Everyone believes that there are smart blacks and stupd blacks, smart whites and dumb whites, good whites and bad blacks, etc.

Schwartz is givin us a package deal. Either you believe in crude determinism or you believe in crude blank-slatism. But biology tells us that psychological traits have a genetic component and they vary from race to race.

There are some 14 year old who drive better than some 40 year olds. But we have bright line tests because it simplifies things. The white IQ is 100 and the black IQ is 85. That means it is rational to make decisions based exclusively on race. You wouldn't want to live in a majority black community because the low IQ is correlated with crime, etc. Based on the law of averages, it is almost statistically impossible for a black neighberhood to be as peaceful as a white one.

But we don’t live in a mystical world of statistical group averages. We live in a world of individuals, each of whom has the ability to think, shape his own character, form and change his own opinions, and make the most of whatever biological endowments he is born with—or not—according to his choice. My point is not to dispute the statistics you cite. It’s to say they are irrelevant and unfair in judging any particular individual.

Schwartz’s point is not to assert that most racists “talk that way” or even think that way in every encounter with individuals. His point is to identify the undiluted premise behind the “diversity” campaign. Most people who support “diversity” probably don’t even consider themselves racists, and may actually believe they are fighting it. But it is important to understand the premise behind the idea to clarify your own thinking so you don’t get trapped into inadvertently advancing bad premises and to enable you to counter bad ideas—especially bad ideas deliberately snuck into the culture under cover of circumlocutions.

The issue of Muslims does not correlate to the issue of race, however. A religion is a chosen set of beliefs, not an accident of birth.

Muslims are not a race, but they tend to come from racial/ethnic groups with low IQs. Middle East and North Africa are 85. Sub-saharan African around 75. So even if there could be some sort of Islamic reformation (or even that Muslims would all convert to Quakerism) you'd still have many of the same problems.

Muslims also practice inbreeding which reduces IQ. 80% of Pakistanis marry their first cousin. If you look at the Rotherham rapes caused by Muslims it's pretty clear there is a racial component to their way of thinking.

As far as Schwartz goes, he would probably consider me and everyone else who thinks their is a genetic component to group differences in intelligence racist. He should deal with the better arguments (such as Charles Murray of The Bell Curve fame) who have studied this issue.

Are you saying there is no public policy significance to race differences in IQ? You could important millsions of Sub-Saharan Africans and they could integrate just fine?

America shouldn't "import" anybody. Open immigration does not mean open borders. It means tight control of our borders and a rational screening process. Obviously, criminals, terrorists, and people with infectious diseases should be barred. Likewise, open immigration should not extend to countries that pose a national security threat to the U.S., such as Iran. The screening process should also require proof of basic education and the means to self-support, along with a ban on collecting on the American welfare state, at least for a meaningful period of time. But "there is no public policy significance to race differences in IQ." Every aspiring immigrant should be judged on individual merit.

Incidentally, not being a criminal, being able to support yourself, having some education are all correlated with high (or at least higher IQ).

If you take the screending process seriously, then you'd pretty much restrict immigrants from Europe since in most other places you don't have criminal background checks (and we wouldn't trust them if they did). And you'd have to rule out people from Muslim countries, since they don't have laws against domestic abuse or don't enforce them. (In other words, you couldn't allow someone in from Pakistan because there is no way of knowing whether he's a serial wife beater.)

I'm curious: Do you agree with "open immigration" Objectivists such as Craig Biddle that Israel should have open immigration of "rights respecting" Muslims even if Israel becomes majority Islamic? Biddle has said it is racist to oppose Islamic immigration.

Mr. Jackson: It takes a rights respecting nation, which the United States of America, today, is NOT, to have open immigration. A rights respecting nation has open immigration, meaning it lets in ITS OWN, meaning rights respecting individuals. It screens by examining ones criminal past. If one has no criminal past, in terms of ITS laws, let 'em in. Today, the U.S. lets in anything, maybe baboons posing as humans, in order to kill rights by the present criminal legislation and regulations, and in the future, at the polls, paving the way to more crime by criminal plan under cover of the guise of government by law. A rights respecting country, like the United States of America used to be, will let in anybody if he's not a crook. If he's 4'11", weighs about 80lb., an has an IQ of 70, but can and will pluck some vegetables, fruits and nuts to earn his subsistence, HE'S IN, he's one of us with the sky as his only limit. He don't need no PH.D or special professional or trade skills. If he's just a 'dumb jack' who'll bust his ass and sweat to produce, he's in.

I've been a truck driver, driving a big o.t.r. tractor with 53' trailers coast to coast. I delivered a load to a place just outside Baltimore. Another trucker beat me to the punch, got his paperwork signed and left. I watched him. He clumb up into his big rig (and it was big), fired it up and drove off. This little squirt was about 4'6', maybe 70lb. His cab interior was probably customized to his smallness. But as he pulled out and maneuvered, he handled it like a real MAN. I thought of the rest of the ball busting stuff involved in truck driving which he surely did. Watching, I about knelt down in reverence, then got my papers signed.

What if we allow large numbers of "rights respecting" Muslims into the US. The first generation might do OK. Yet with the second and third generation the low IQ and high inbred nature of their population will take over. This is what happened in France. It's the second and third generation that many of the Jihadists are drawn from.

It's also happened here in the USA with Hispanics.

It's the principal of regression to the mean. Things tend to return to their averages.

If we were to even consider open immigration we'd have to end the weldfare state for everyone (not just immigrants). It' just too easy for immigrants to get welfare (marry a native and get WIC benefits based on your family size, etc.). I do think multiculuturalism and other trends are making things worse.

A proper, pro-rights, open immigration policy need not be and should never be a national suicide pact. Open immigration does not mean an anything goes, open borders policy without restrictions and that ignores context.

About Me

Greetings and welcome to my blog. My name is Michael A. (Mike) LaFerrara. I sometimes use the pen or "screen" name "Mike Zemack" or "Zemack" in online activism, such as posted comments on articles. “Zemack” stands for the first letters of the names of my six grandchildren. I was born in 1949 in New Jersey, U.S.A., where I retired from a career in the plumbing, building controls, and construction industries, and still reside with my wife of 45 years. The purpose of my blog is the discussion of a wide range of topics relating to human events from the perspective of Objectivism, the philosophy of reason, rational self-interest, and Americanism originated by Ayn Rand.

As Rand observed: “The professional intellectual is the field agent of the army whose commander-in-chief is the philosopher.” I am certainly not the philosopher. But neither am I a field agent, or general. I am a foot soldier in that Objectivist army that fights for an individualist society in which every person can live in dignified sovereignty, by his own reasoned judgment, for his own sake, in that state of peaceful coexistence with his fellow man that only capitalist political and economic freedom can provide. While I am a fully committed Objectivist, my opinions are based on my own understanding of Objectivism, and should not be taken as definitive “Objectivist positions.” For the full story of my journey toward Objectivism, see my Introduction.

One final introductory note: I strongly recommend Philosophy, Who Needs it, which highlights the inescapable importance of philosophy in every individual's life. I can be reached at mal.atlas@comcast.net. Thanks, Mike LaFerrara.

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Quotes I Like

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.—Francisco d'Anconia

I love getting older...I get to grow up and learn things. Madalyn, 5 years old, Montesorri student, and my grand-daughter

The best thing one can do for the poor is to not become one of them. Author Unknown

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Francis Bacon

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Ronald Reagan

Thinking is hard work. If it weren't, more people would do it. Henry Ford

Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. Ayn Rand